If you’re also stuck at home self-isolating with little ones, here is a list of ideas of some of the things we’ve been doing to avoid going stir crazy:
- Family yoga Lesson (by yours truly – I’m particularly proud of this endeavour, which went surprisingly well until MiniM#2 got bored and began climbing onto my back while I was in downward dog position). Grab yoga mats if you have them – bath mats work well for little people – and try out some basic (or more complex) yoga positions to relaxing music.
- Plant Vegetable seeds (luckily we had some from weeks ago which I’d bought and set aside and never got around to planting). I entertained whimsical thoughts of living off the land from our broccoli, cucumber and sweet pepper seeds we lovingly planted. Sadly, the propagator with sweet pepper seeds got accidentally tipped upside down while I was out on a solo bike ride. I’m still smarting from DH telling me to ‘put things into perspective’ when I ‘might have’ freaked out a little (he was right of course..).
- Form a family band – I’m playing nursery rhymes on the piano – painfully slowly – but I’m sure I’ll speed up as isolation continues. And the girls are humouring me by singing along. If you don’t have a piano, then some toy instruments – or even a pretend microphone-hair brush and a wooden spoon on an upturned flower pot as a drum or a frying pan as a banjo (ok I’m grasping at straws!) – could do.
- Bake cakes– we’re used to randomly making banana cake, as we always seemed to have a surfeit of ageing bananas, but lately I’ve thrown caution to the wind and branched out into making carrot cake (bonus of having hidden vegetables), zingy ginger cake (ginger is great for your immunity!) and good old-fashioned sponge cake. Once the cake comes out the oven the girls get a spoon each to ice their half of the cake. If you add a few drops of food colouring to different pots of icing sugar you can get arty too.
- Get Fresh Air and exercise –If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, make sure you use it, especially while the weather’s nice. Bouncing on the trampoline, playing hide and seek, ‘what’s the time Mr wolf’ or simply playing with toys, skittles, ‘playing shop’ outside is a great way of getting fresh air and some sunshine. We’ve been taking the girls on walks in Ashdown Forest, which is so vast it’s easy stay away from other humans, as well as bike rides along the disused railway line by our house (maintaining a 2-metre distance from anyone else).
- Make cards for Granny – by far the toughest part of the isolation is not being able to see Granny, who lives the other side of the same village – and trying to make her granddaughters understand why, without worrying them. Instead they have drawn her cards that we posted (second class to postman would take at least 48 hours to deliver and eliminate cross-contamination risk). MiniM#2 drew a puzzling image of herself, granny and a baby on the card.
- Make Dens – easy to do, fling a couple of blankets over the kitchen table and some connecting chairs so they can make a secret hiding place underneath and drag toys there. Or Dolly tea parties – again, easy to do – throw a blanket on the floor and get them to arrange toy (or plastic) plates and cups for all their dolls/ soft toys.
- Make Garlic bread – well, strictly speaking it’s just making garlic butter and putting it on some bread, but the girls were interested and garlic fights infection! We mashed several cloves of garlic into butter and sprinkled some mixed herbs on top. Then we spread it onto some toasted burger baps and put them under the grill – yum!
- Play Games and Jigsaw Puzzles – At 3 and 5 the girls are old enough to play games like snap, Ludo, and snakes and ladders. I’m officially bored of the last two (and find it hard not to get competitive during snap.. 🙈) However, Orchard Toys make some great games which are educational and mildly fun for adults too if not played excessively. Jigsaw puzzles are a firm family favourite which we all enjoy playing and both girls have got good enough to do 160-piece puzzles that we can all dip into.
- Encourage independent play – best of all! As I sit here typing this blog post, MiniM#1 is dressed in her summer school dress with her school bag slung over her shoulder. MiniM#1 is wearing a witch’s outfit and is teacher, giving a ‘lesson’ to a roomful of dolls and her older sister. Now the school is going on a ‘swimming trip’ apparently and they are running upstairs to change into swimming costumes…
What have you been doing to quell the boredom/ stay sane?
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Calamitous Mummy 